Judge Was Right To Strike Down Line-item Veto

Don Noel

April 21, 1997|By Don Noel Don Noel is The Courant's political columnist.

Almost the last item adopted each year by the General Assembly is the bonding bill, authorizing capital projects to be financed by borrowing. It's a catchall that includes major state projects such as university or prison construction, as well as state largess for small local projects, what's often called pork-barrel spending.

The omnibus bill is held until the last minute because many of those local projects are hostages -- to be sure rank-and-file legislators vote with party leaders on controversial issues.

Such issues are often stalled until late in the session by bargaining among legislative leaders, the governor and his spokespeople and special-interest lobbyists. It's not uncommon for legislators from either party to find the end product distasteful.

If they break ranks and vote against their leaders, however, they know they can kiss their favorite local projects goodbye. The parkette or bridge or public improvement they'd hoped would show local voters their ability to bring home the bacon -- and thus deserve re-election -- would be out of the bonding bill.

That's an awesome club to enforce party discipline, and not very democratic. At least, though, it's discipline within the legislative branch. If they think their leaders have become too autocratic, legislators have the power to elect new leaders.

Imagine that kind of club in the hands of the president of the United States, able to veto specific projects if members of Congress fail to toe the presidential line on dozens of other votes unrelated to the budget.

That's the power Congress a year ago gave the executive branch: the line-item veto, power to cancel specific spending items in a budget bill.

Fortunately for democratic government, a federal judge this month struck down the line-item veto as unconstitutional.

Presidents have pleaded for line-item veto power for most of this century. Connecticut's senators, both Democrats, split on the issue a year ago: Sen. Joe Lieberman supported it; Sen. Chris Dodd opposed it.

Dodd, although he didn't join the bipartisan group that brought the court challenge, continues to say that a line-item veto would be a radical shift in the careful balance of power created in the constitution.

It's true that most governors have similar authority, he says, but state government is different from national government.

The last Connecticut governor to use the line- item veto was Thomas J. Meskill in 1971 and 1972. He disapproved a total of $108,000 worth of capital spending. Legislators quickly found a way to put pork-barrel items beyond a governor's reach by lumping them together on one line, the good along with the bad.

Besides, Connecticut budgets are ultimately a compromise between the legislative and executive branches. Governors would be double-dealing if they line-vetoed the compromises they'd agreed to; and legislative leaders take care of the enforcing.

Dodd is right: The bargaining process is different at the federal level. Presidents already have enormous power and shouldn't be given more.

The American electorate has recently been vaguely dissatisfied, demanding simple solutions to complex problems: a balanced-budget amendment, term limits, a line-item veto.

Those are all substitutes for a citizenry that pays attention and refuses to re-elect wastrels.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which will presumably hear an appeal, has recently showed the same sour spirit; it might well overturn the District Court ruling and reinstate the line-item veto.

The saving grace may be that the law as written lets a president sign a bill or budget into law -- and then within five days unilaterally rescind parts of the law.

That may be too broad an intrusion of the balance of power even for this court. I hope so.